Colombia – Travel Diary #5 : Florencia, Amazonian Forest, and Waterfalls

 

Hey !

Dear amazing folks, here’s part 5 of my Colombian Adventures !

 

 

▶ If you fish to check out the previous posts, you can click on one of the links below :

• Colombia Travel Diary #1
• Colombia Travel Diary #2 : Breakfast, Witchcraft & Shopping !
• Colombia Travel Diary #3 : Cheese Empanadas, National Day, & Finca
• Colombia Travel Diary #4 : Dentist, Finca Lunch, and Gambling Games !

 

 

The 23 of July, we were off to Florencia (yes I’m quite late in my posting, I’ll do my best to catch up !) to visit my aunt and her city, for the first time, later we were going to the Amazonian forest !

 

The City of Florencia :

We arrived quite late, it was a 4h journey (3h by bus and 1h by plane) so we got to visit the city only the next day. Florencia, located in the Caquetá department, was named after the famous Italian city when the colonization took place. Many cities were named after already existing ones (there’s also a Madrid, Barcelona… and Mexico was even named “Nueva España” at the beginning, meaning literally “New Spain”).

Here are some pictures of the city :

 

More witchcraft in the markets :

 

 

 

The church was beautiful too, and typically Colombian with a baroque/roman mix style :

 

 

 

There were also some weird posters (this one says : “The lord wants to speak with you, but not on the phone”) :

 

 

Here’s the outfit I was wearing by the way ! featuring my Boys Cry t-shirt, that I told you about in my June Favorites Post :

After lunch, we went to cool off into the rivers that surround the city, Florencia and the department of Caquetá is so warm in comparison to Popayán, the city where my grandparents live ! :

 

Some cows went to greet us :

 

 

 

Into the Wild Amazonian Forest :

The next day, we planned to do a hike into the Amazonian Forest. It was stunning !

The main road was an actual river, so we bought some cheap sneakers for the occasion, since our shoes were going to be destroyed by the water/rocks/sand combo.

 

Also, my outfit that day wasn’t as fashionable as the day before ! We had to wear something practical and a special helmet, as you can see I don’t think anyone would look good in these conditions ! :

 

(me and my brother, Corentin)

We got to see sooo much nature, I’ll add explanations into the legends of each picture if you’re interested ! :

 

 

 

We even met a venomous snake ! :

 

 

Into the Batcave :

We didn’t see any righter of wrongs dressed as a dark knight unfortunately, but in the amazonian forest we saw many bats into their natural habitat ! :

 

 

Again, we had to wear an adequate outfit, with a mask this time to prevent inhaling the toxic gases released by the bat guano :

 

 

 

When we finished the hike, our guide took us to his finca and served us lunch, it was delicious and invigorating after all that :

 

 

 

There was a cute kitty there, I couldn’t resist petting him :

 

 

 

 

The Amazonian Waterfalls :

The next day, we had another hike planned into the Amazonian forest, but this time leading to 2 natural waterfalls.

As the day before, the main road was made of a river. A cute baby doggie was following us :

 

 

This is the first waterfall we reached, we swam there it was awesome and so refreshing ! :

 

The doggie was exhausted, poor thing he was so small he barely could walk on the huge rocks of the river :

 

 

 

Since the river stopped at the waterfall, we had to find another way to continue, and that way was the forest hill itself. The guide gave us a rope, and we all climbed one behind the other. Unfortunately the puppy had to stay there, he was too weak to follow us !

 

We then arrived to the top of the first waterfall we just saw, played a bit in the water, and continued out way following the river we found again.

Bad thing is, my stepfather broke a rib there. He managed to continue, but god that must have hurt really bad. Also my mother fell and hurt her hip a bit, my brother hurt his hand and bled a whole bucket. It was kind of dangerous I realize, you’d better be a bit fit to do this kind of hiking !

And there we arrived to the second waterfall, the highest with 20 meters high :

 

 

We went back to another finca where we left our things, and there was another cute kitty there ! I can’t help petting every kitty I see, I was in kitty heaven !

 

 

We took so many pictures, but I can’t put them all here, the amazonian forest is a big place ! I’ll share some more on Instagram later.

At the end of the day we were so exhausted, I didn’t even had enough energy to have dinner.

Would you like to do such type of hikes ?

 

Read The Next One Here :

COLOMBIA – TRAVEL DIARY #6 : TIMBIO, BIRTHDAY PARTY, & YELLOW OUTFIT